Verizon and Comcast are clearly still baffled that the measures they took to slow down streaming video for their customers is slowing down streaming video for their customers, and are likely to advise them to "turn their router off and on" again.

Well the Comcast stats certainly ring true with my experience using Netflix over the last three or four months. Where once the service was basically flawless, now I'll be lucky if I experience no instances of stuttering or freezing in a single hour.

I'm really not sure if the problem is contention or what, but I tend to keep my iPad or my laptop nearby, and whenever things get flaky I'll launch a speed test, or do refresh a bunch of web pages. Curiously these never show the same issues, making it look more like sustained traffic, or specific routes that are snarling up somewhere.

I'd blame Comcast, but a) I don't know for sure, and b) what's the point? I can't go anywhere else.

I have FiOS and the Netflix quality has dropped precipitously since I moved into my new home in October.

I've been streaming Futurama recently, which is a standard-def show and fairly simple from a video compression standpoint (plenty of big flat colors!) and it's commonplace for it to get pixellated and it's even buffered a few times on a connection that registers at 30+ MBPS

That the latest performance complaints came after Verizon's win over the FCC in a court battle over net neutrality rules led to claims that Verizon was celebrating its victory by throttling Netflix traffic.

I noticed the dropoff around the time Verizon was rejecting that free Netflix box because they wanted to charge Netflix per bit. I don't think Verizon ever gave a rats ass about net neutrality in practice, it was just something for their lawyers to overturn eventually.

Not that we'll ever see it, but I'm really curious to see some information regarding the movement of this traffic between service providers. What if 50% of all Netflix traffic passed through Verizon, which would easily explain the drop for their subscription-paying end-users? That wouldn't paint the whole picture, but could add a lot of context to why actual user speed may vary.

I've noticed Charter stuttering a bit on a consistently 30+mbps this past month, but it's impossible to know whether it's Charter's fault or not. The ISPs will never actually tell us where the traffic bottlenecks are, and until then most of this is ultimately speculation (as interesting as this data is).

"And for the very reasonable $19.99 a month, we can make netflix faster for you".

Not at all. The notice will come from Netflix and look something like this.

"We have been forced to raise your fees by $3/month to pay for acceptable network service from your ISP. We deeply regret these fees but have no choice. If you disagree with this, please contact your representative in Congress and tweet with hashtag #FCCsavethenet."

"We state unequivocally that Verizon’s broadband Internet access services deliver a pristine user experience to our customers at any time of day on every day of the week. This has been repeatedly proven through independent testing by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has conclusively demonstrated that FiOS Internet consistently delivers both download and upload speeds in excess of what we advertise. In short, our Internet customers often get more than they pay for.

How the Internet works can be complicated, and consumers should be aware of the fact that the integrity of their home Internet connection is only a portion of the streaming video quality equation. If their broadband connection is functioning correctly, the source of their frustration and the content they wish to see may be one in the same."

Nowhere in this smartly worded retort is a denial that they throttle Netflix traffic. If they didn't do so, they'd be sure to trumpet it loudly. So it's likely a VERY safe bet that they do throttle Netflix traffic along with other services.

"And for the very reasonable $19.99 a month, we can make netflix faster for you".

Not at all. The notice will come from Netflix and look something like this.

"We have been forced to raise your fees by $3/month to pay for acceptable network service from your ISP. We deeply regret these fees but have no choice. If you disagree with this, please contact your representative in Congress and tweet with hashtag #FCCsavethenet."

I'm a Comcast subscriber, and used to have flawless Netflix connectivity with videos buffering in HD within seconds. Over the last few months this has degraded to where I don't get HD on videos at all. It's been even worse with Youtube. Following the suggestion of many commentators here, I signed up for a VPN service. Suddenly everything is great again.

"We state unequivocally that Verizon’s broadband Internet access services deliver a pristine user experience to our customers at any time of day on every day of the week. This has been repeatedly proven through independent testing by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has conclusively demonstrated that FiOS Internet consistently delivers both download and upload speeds in excess of what we advertise. In short, our Internet customers often get more than they pay for.

How the Internet works can be complicated, and consumers should be aware of the fact that the integrity of their home Internet connection is only a portion of the streaming video quality equation. If their broadband connection is functioning correctly, the source of their frustration and the content they wish to see may be one in the same."

Nowhere in this smartly worded retort is a denial that they throttle Netflix traffic. If they didn't do so, they'd be sure to trumpet it loudly. So it's likely a VERY safe bet that they do throttle Netflix traffic along with other services.

I came here to say that. It is kinda like when you ask a politician a question.

Anecdotally, the listed rates are accurate for prime-time viewing on Comcast in the Chicago suburbs. 06:30 CST on a Saturday, however, can see rates of 21Mbps (I pay for 25Mbps service). I've moved my HD content consumption to early mornings.

Hopefully things will improve slightly after I'm able to see grass again. My lawn has been snow-covered for months, as has every other yard in my area.

This is the result of not enough competition, bandwidth is getting cheaper yet we keep getting fucked. More caps & video stream throttling, anything to make that extra buck. There is not much can I do when I have two options to get the speed I get Mediacom or Frontier. I could stop buying internet but I would loose my sanity "whats left of it" in a few days.

I'm on Comcast in Houston, and I can confirm that when I use a VPN/proxy through a hosted server (in Dallas) I get near instantaneous HD content on Netflix. I frequently get degraded or choppy performance otherwise. Unfortunately I don't have unlimited bandwidth on my hosted server.

I find these statistics kind of interesting when taken with the e-mail I received yesterday from redbox. It was advertising a new streaming video service, redbox instant by Verizon. This seems to me like a good plan for a company that is basically a de facto monopoly..

and Kansas City, i think it is, wants to stop local fiber networks start ups from happening. not to keep the local cable companies in control though, oh no! just to keep the people from getting a good, fast, stable service instead of the heap of shit they're getting atm! and equally, of course, no politician will get a fat, brown envelope full of Benjamins either. yeah, like hell they they wont!!

The graphs sort of rearrange themselves depending on which data set you choose.

So when Netfilx feeds you misleading information you just include it without so much as a "by the way folks, these Y axes are totally misleading"? I guess it's too much to ask professional journalists to redraw some graphs in the 21st century.

I don't think so, no. They're trying to push the payment side onto the service providers, to force them to raise their prices, so they will be less competitive with their own content services.

It's not that they don't want your money, they do. But they want to hurt upstarts like Netflix at the same time, and do so without making themselves look like the bad guys.

They wouldn't happen at the same time. But knowing the way ISPs want to operate, a few months after they start collecting extra cash from Netflix they'll turn around and ask for more from consumers to "Improve your individual Netflix experience." Barring any net neutrality progress, assuming.

I'm really not sure if the problem is contention or what, but I tend to keep my iPad or my laptop nearby, and whenever things get flaky I'll launch a speed test, or do refresh a bunch of web pages. Curiously these never show the same issues, making it look more like sustained traffic, or specific routes that are snarling up somewhere.

I see the same thing on CenturyLink DSL. I have 7Mbps service, and every time I run a speed test I get at least that (upto 7.8 Mbps). When I start playing a Netflix video on my Roku it initially selects the 3.xMbps stream (have have debugging turned on to show this info), but without fail after a few minutes it has to buffer again and drops down to the 1.x Mbps stream, and on bad nights this will repeat and it will drop down to the 0.5 Mbps stream. This happens mid-day as well as in the evening, so it's not just a prime-time congestion issue.

I don't know if it is my Roku, wireless router, or modem overheating after some time, or if CenturyLink gives higher priority to short-term connections, to speed up email and web browsing at the expense of streaming, or if they are intentionally gaming the speed test connections.